Council Approves Permit Parking Program Near Mission Peak

This was a difficult issue with supporters of mine arguing strongly from both sides. Sometimes in politics you just can’t make everybody happy.

On the one hand, I am definitely in favor of promoting outdoor activities. I used to be a Sierra Club hike leader. It’s great that we have such a popular destination as Mission Peak.

On the other hand, the very heavy demand combined with the small parking lot has

resulted in significant impacts to the surrounding neighborhood. I’ve been there on weekends and seen the steady stream of people swarming the neighborhood from well before dawn to well after dusk in the summer. Also, the large number of hikers, especially those that are creating their own ad hoc paths, has caused a lot of damage to the park.

Using permit parking is not an ideal solution to the problem but it’s the only one that was a realistic short term option. I feel it’s a reasonable compromise. There will still be over 200 parking spaces available on the local neighborhood streets. People will still be able to come and hike. There will just be less spaces for people to park.

There is also an adequate alternative which is to use the Ohlone parking lot. I prefer this way to hike Mission Peak myself as it allows one to get a bit of shade and it’s not such a direct route up.

There are long term plans to build a 280 space parking lot right to the inside of the current entrance. An EIR was done for that last year. It was noted at our liasion meeting that the Final EIR has been delayed but is expected to be released some time this year.

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Almost all use trails within Mission Peak Regional Preserve were blocked by EBRPD between 2012 and 2014. Erosion at the top of the summit requires steps which EBRPD has refused to install. Visitors to our city should be treated with respect and not police harassment. City and EBRPD police have handed out over 2400 citations, the majority of which are nuisance tickets (parking over 18″ from the curb, no front license plate, within 3′ of a driveway, etc.). Forcing EBRPD to spend funds received from taxes to block public parking is a waste and will hurt Fremont economically. 270,000 visitors to this park in 2014 (EBRPD numbers) generated $1.6m in economic benefits to our local businesses. 200 parking spaces means a fraction of the potential recreational users will have access to this park. Visitors will go elsewhere and our city will be poorer for it. EBRPD will also be poorer as the $100k they spend on blocking park access each year will be money they don’t spend on protecting our parks.